Blog Roundup

A Friday Hodgepodge

1. "False: All Claims, Positive or Negative, Require Evidence," by Harry Binswanger (Value for Value):

To know, even to know that something might be the case, is to have formed a valid mental product; it takes the means of doing so. Evidence is that means. No evidence, no means of cognition. No means of cognition, no cognition.

The positive/negative distinction does apply to acts of consciousness: not accepting an idea (a negative) isn't an act at all. It's the commitment of your consciousness that needs justification. The not making of that commitment isn't a disguised commitment.

Atheism is not the belief in non-God. It's not a belief in anything; it's the rejection of belief.

The usual way of defending atheism is wrong. The defense is not: "I don't need a reason to accept atheism, but they need a reason to accept theism." The deepest explanation is: atheism isn't a belief; it isn't something you accept. Atheism is the refusal to accept nonsense stories.

480 words/2 minutes

2. "In Defense of 'Evil Billionaire' Jim Pattison," by Jaana Woiceshyn (How to Be Profitable and Moral):

The worst part of [Green Party leader Emily] Lowan's immoral argument is that it completely ignores the value Pattison's grocery businesses create, not only to him but to his customers (who can shop for plentiful food at local stores), to 59,000 employees (with well-paying jobs across all his companies), and to other businesses who can thrive in areas with value-creating grocery stores.

The anti-capitalist activists use the same arguments not only against grocery stores but against all successful businesses while ignoring the huge role business plays in making our lives better by producing and trading products and services that we need. Penalizing and destroying businesses would make our lives miserable and much poorer.

900 words/3 minutes

3. "The Lawyers Defending Trump's Tariffs Know They're Un-American. Here's How We Can Tell" (November 2025), by Ben Bayer (New Ideal):

Originalism is appealing to those who revere America's Founding Fathers and documents. But too many slip back and forth between thinking that the founders are to be revered because they did something great, and because they represent preserved, long-held tradition. Trump's "originalist" apologists exploit this ambiguity and cash in on the tradition worship, with the effect of negating what actually made the founders great: they overthrew the authority of the king on the basis of revolutionary philosophy that would liberate mankind from shackles. In their desperation to justify Trump's tariff powers, Trump's apologists reveal a willingness to trample on that revolution and reinstitute a monarchy. [footnotes omitted]

3000 words/10 minutes

4. "One Quick Question," by Harry Binswanger (Harry Binswanger Substack):

Crime is a problem. Crime by foreigners in the U.S. is a part of that problem. Crime by foreigners illegally in the U.S. is a part of that part.

Criminals, whether illegals or citizens, have guns and confederates. ICE agents have assault weapons, SWAT gear, and an organization of tens of thousands.

Criminals are condemned by everyone. They are outlaws, operating in the shadows. ICE agents have a moral sanction. ICE was set up by the U.S. Congress. It is funded by Congress. Half the country think ICE agents are doing God's work. Or they did until the recent killings.

310 words/1 minute

-- CAV

Savvy Answers to Stupid Questions

Writing at Comstock's, Suzanne Lucas tackles clueless/illegal job interview questions, prompted by the situation she uses in her title "I Was Asked My Zodiac Sign During a Job Interview. Should I Be Worried?"

Although she focuses on job interviews, and the other questions would be ordinary in other circumstances, I like Lucas's recommendation for how to answer the title question regardless of that context.

If someone actually takes astrology seriously, that is indeed something I'd want to know about that person, as it likely reflects poor judgment, at least about some things.

Here's the full question and Lucas's answer:

I had a second-round interview at a top-tier company, and the final question completely threw me off: "What's your astrological sign?" It felt unprofessional and, honestly, a bit disrespectful for a serious interview. Curious [about] your thoughts -- red flag or harmless curveball?

Answer: Yes.

The average manager only interviews people about once a year, so they might not know what they're doing when it comes to this (perhaps dreaded) duty. This doesn't mean they're a bad boss or that the company isn't a good one.

In your case, it could mean that this person will be a nightmare boss who checks their horoscope each morning and assigns work based on the predictions. Or it could mean they're nervous and making small talk. It's hard to tell off this one question.

...

There are a couple of great ways to answer this. One is to play it straight and tell your sign. If you say "Aquarius," and the interviewer says, "I KNEW it!! You part your hair on the left!" then you've just learned something very valuable: This manager will rely on silly things to make decisions.

If they reply with something nonchalant, like "Cool," or "Oh, I'm a Libra," then follow up: "Why do you ask?"

...

That said, do you want to work for a company that hires based on the zodiac?

(Conversely, you don't want to write off a job just because someone asked a silly question.)

Lucas's answer shows a way to find out if such questions are serious, or perhaps just tone-deaf attempts at small talk. Lucas's last sentence above shows why it is important to take advantage of such a question in a high-stakes situation.

Whether someone else has nutty beliefs isn't always important, but it's easy to come up with other times one might appreciate knowing about them before they become relevant or have the chance to do so.

-- CAV

P.S. My post title was inspired by my childhood hobby of reading my Dad's old collection of Mad magazines, which carried a feature called, Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions.

Lucas's piece will prompt us to resist the temptation of a smart alec answer and go for knowledge instead.

Trump Begs Questions on Elections

The fact that President Trump wants to "nationalize" elections immediately raises the question of Why? His pouting for years about his 2020 loss leaves no doubt that he wants to change something about how we conduct our elections. In his mind, he should have won, and by his words, we are to believe he wants to make these "rigged" elections more "fair."

For anyone who has better things to do than listen to whining, but is concerned about what such an openly corrupt politician might want to do, George Will has a nice primer on what is going on.

Spoiler alert: Trump is indeed up to no good. After recounting Trump's indulgence in conspiracism on the matter, Will engages with some facts:

Someone should read to him "Lost, Not Stolen," [pdf] a 2022 report by eight conservatives (two former Republican senators, three former federal appellate judges, a former Republican solicitor general, and two Republican election law specialists). They examined all 187 counts in the 64 court challenges filed in multiple states by Trump and his supporters.

Twenty cases were dismissed before hearings on their merits, 14 were voluntarily dismissed by Trump and his supporters before hearings. Of the 30 that reached hearings on the merits, Trump's side prevailed in only one, Pennsylvania, involving far too few votes to change the state's result. Trump's batting average? .016. In Arizona, the most exhaustively scrutinized state, a private firm selected by Trump's advocates confirmed Trump's loss, finding 99 additional Biden votes and 261 fewer Trump votes. [link and italics in original. Bold added.

Trump, who started his term with the sound and fury of an entire agency allegedly devoted to combating fraud and waste in government, surely has better things to spend his political capital and your tax capital on than "fixing" a clearly functional system -- if, that is, by fixing, one means "causing to work as intended."

"I just want to find 11,780 votes." -- Presdent Donald Trump

As for myself, I'll view this in light of his famously pressuring an official in Georgia to "find 11,780 votes."

-- CAV

Can the Pardon Power Be Fixed Quickly?

According to reports, Representative Don Bacon (R-NE) has agreed to cosponsor a constitutional amendment that would give Congress oversight over presidential pardons -- apart from the existing remedy of impeaching the President, of course:

The bill was introduced by Rep. Johnny Olszewski (D-MD) last December and would allow for a minimum of 20 House members and five senators to call for congressional review of a pardon, which would lead to a 60-day deadline for Congress to nullify that pardon with a two-thirds majority vote -- similar to a veto override.

While I think the proper solution to Trump's blatant abuse of this power would be his impeachment and removal from office, this measure strikes me as a reasonable middle ground between eliminating that power altogether and having to clear the normally very high bar of impeachment to address less flagrant or obvious cases of abuse or error.

It is interesting to consider the amendment process for the Constitution, as well as history to evaluate the viability of this solution:

Under Article V, a proposal for an amendment must be adopted either by two-thirds of both houses of Congress or by a national convention that had been requested by two-thirds of the state legislatures. Following this, Congress decides whether the proposed amendment is to be ratified by state legislatures or state ratifying conventions. The proposed amendment along with the method of ratification is sent to the Office of the Federal Register, which copies it in slip law format and submits it to the states. To date, the convention method of proposal has never been tried and the convention method of ratification has only been used once, for the Twenty-first Amendment.

A proposed amendment becomes an operative part of the Constitution as soon as it is ratified by three-fourths of the States (currently 38 of the 50 states). No additional action by Congress or anyone else after ratification is required... [links and footnotes omitted, bold added]

While, historically, most amendments have taken years to be ratified, there is precedent for a rapid-enough process to do some good during Trump's term:

The Twenty-sixth Amendment (Amendment XXVI) to the United States Constitution establishes a nationally standardized minimum age of 18 for participation in state and federal elections. It was proposed by Congress on March 23, 1971, and three-fourths of the states ratified it by July 1, 1971.

That's three months from start to finish.

That noted, it is relevant that those in favor of the lower voting age had worked over most of a decade to curry widespread support for such a measure. As ill-informed and indifferent as most American voters are, and as normalized as corruption has become in American politics, it is hard for me to imagine enough outrage over Trump's pardons to cause this proposed amendment to be ratified during Trump's term.

That said, my off-the-cuff opinion is Go for it, anyway and better late than never.

-- CAV

In Effect, There Is No GOP

A Reason piece by Eric Boehm should give pause to anyone still under the illusion that a Republican majority in Congress serves any useful purpose when it comes to protecting economic freedom, let alone expanding it:

The first of the two key House votes this week came on Tuesday night, when lawmakers narrowly voted to clear the way for resolutions directly challenging Trump's tariff powers, as Reason's Jack Nicastro detailed. That was followed by a vote on Wednesday to disapprove of tariffs on Canadian imports -- the first of what could be several similar resolutions brought to the floor in the coming weeks and months.

Opponents of the tariffs technically won both votes, thanks to a small faction of Republicans who broke ranks. But the margins were so thin that a presidential veto seems inevitable and likely insurmountable.

"This is a fruitless exercise and a pointless one, and I'm disappointed in it," Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R -- La.) said shortly after the second vote.

If it were a pointless exercise, the blame does not lie with the six Republicans who voted to end the tariffs on Canada. It lies with Republicans like McClintock. [links removed, bold added]

McClintock (R-CA) is a self-described "tariff skeptic" who, like many other Republican representatives, nevertheless voted against both measures.

The rest of the piece will be informative for people who haven't paid much attention to the havoc tariffs are wreaking on the economy, or the fact that this administration has all but admitted they are harmful, and yet won't quit them.

On that latter point:

"Reports of tariff carve-outs offered to win votes against the tariff resolution and of discussions about rolling back the steel and aluminum tariffs are both clear signs the Trump administration is increasingly aware of the damage its signature tariff policy is doing," noted Erika York, vice president of federal tax policy at the Tax Foundation.

[We also see] what little regard the executive branch has for Congress. The Constitution vests trade and taxing power with the legislative branch. Trump's use of emergency powers to set tariffs on imports from Canada (and lots of other places) is subject to serious constitutional questions. But even against that backdrop, the administration views Congress as caring so little about its power that lawmakers can be easily bought off. [links omitted, bold added]

The only reason this independent voter saw for usually voting for Republicans was that I viewed them as more likely to support or enact policies that protected or expanded economic freedom. Absent that, and faced with the obvious prospect that this party isn't going to do anything to contain the lunacy of our President, why on earth should I do anything but vote Democrat this November?

-- CAV

Four How-Tos

A Friday Hodgepodge

1. Alison Green has some thoughts on what to do about being repeatedly proselytized to while undergoing medical procedures:

The tech is representing the medical practice and the doctor; she's not there to proselytize, and you're not there to be proselytized to. It would be wildly inappropriate under any circumstances, but the fact that she persisted after you asked her to stop makes it even worse.

Tell your doctor what happened. Say it was frequent and persistent, and she didn't stop after you asked her to, and say that you don't come there to be proselytized at.

Some commenters recommend going to professional bodies or regulatory agencies if speaking to the doctor isn't enough. That has merit, but I'd also switch providers after that, if possible.

2. I dislike shoe laces because of how frequently they come undone, and double knots give me the opposite problem. I usually go for loafers or the new type of tennis shoe that doesn't require tying, but the next time I have to deal with laces, I'm trying the Berluti knot, which looks easy to learn, and will both stay tied and be easy to release.

3. If you cook, you might sometimes have to deal with wilted scallions. A MyRecipes post can help with that:

If your scallions do start to wilt and lose that crisp texture, you can shock them back to life. "Soak root ends in cold water for an hour to revive," explains Gunders. (Pro tip? Putting wilted produce in cold water is an easy way to bring a lot of different vegetables and herbs back to life.)

I don't have this problem often, but if you do, the same post also has tips on preventing this altogether.

4. Someone gave me a gift membership to AARP, which caused my junk mail to go from zero to sixty in no time flat.

This induced me to discover that there is a way to cut down on junk mail akin to the National Do Not Call Registry.

I think I'll give that a try.

-- CAV

Use 'Company Ready' to Get to 'You Ready'

Over at the Unfuck Your Habitat home cleaning site is a post whose general sentiment I agree with, but to which I will add my two cents on implementation.

Yes. "You Ready" is better than "Company Ready" as an overall goal for home cleanliness for moral and practical reasons -- not to mention inspiring some thought on the role of altruism in causing the cycle of messiness and panic cleaning this post alludes to.

But I disagree with bolded part of the otherwise strong closing:

Focus on making your house "you ready." Bring it, gradually, up to your standards of cleanliness. Make it so that you're comfortable, and so that you enjoy looking around your home. When you reach that point, your house will always be company ready. You're the most important person who will step through your door. Try to make your living space reflect that. [bold added]

Sometimes life will get in the way of that.

For example, my wife recently invited a colleague and her young family over to our home since we're along a Mardi Gras parade route. We're in the middle of moving our daughter out of our downstairs guest room and into her permanent room upstairs and not fully out of our moving boxes. This was on top of us being very cluttered from a busy period.

This would have been embarrassing on short notice, but there was enough lead time that it was easy to combine the push to get the house uncluttered again with getting a few things in better shape to move our daughter and -- my big win here -- finally getting the area around our side entrance straightened out.

The side area was cluttered, but workable enough that I could prioritize other things, but I was always low-grade annoyed with it. Now, it has a functioning landing zone for the kids to put their school things and shoes away, and the coat closet, now being easy to reach, can keep the coat rack uncluttered. Oh, and my daughter's trombone has its own little corner now, and won't be getting knocked over anymore.

More generally, I think some amount of tidying is probably always necessary ahead of any lengthy visit, but this will decrease over time.

As part of prepping for guests and gradually getting one's house up to standards, I like to approach every tidying-up as a chance to make a big improvement I've been wanting, but haven't gotten around to.

-- CAV

P.S. I thought of another issue regarding that area I straightened out: One can acclimatize to a mess and become "blind" to it over time. If I recall correctly, the author of UFYH recommends using photographs to overcome this, but I think the prospect of guests coming can help cure this kind of "blindness," too.